Page 3. The rise of the family farm, 1880–1970

From the 1890s social and economic changes made the family
farm the dominant economic unit throughout New Zealand, while
changing the role that women and children played on the
farm.

Growth in family farms

The Liberal government of the 1890s broke up the great
pastoral estates and purchased Māori land. Both were sold off
for family farms. The rise of refrigerated shipping made
smaller pastoral holdings producing sheep meat and beef
viable. Refrigeration established a flourishing export trade
in butter and cheese, and made small dairy farms successful
units. The number of individual farms more than doubled from
38,038 in 1891 to 77,229 in 1918.

Nuclear families

Increasingly those living on the land were nuclear
families, and the gender ratio evened up with fewer single
males working on large estates. Even those hired for work on
sheep stations tended to be married couples. During the
course of the 20th century there was a move away from the
employment of single women as domestic servants, and
unmarried girls on farms tended to go off to the city for
work, or to get married locally. By 1950 farming areas had a
much lower proportion of unmarried women than urban areas,
and had a very young average age of marriage of about 21.

School days

When education became compulsory in 1877 children were
expected to be at school rather than labouring in the fields.
It took some time for this expectation to become a full
reality, but it did so as more local schools were set up and
school bus services became established. Some children of
richer farmers were sent away to boarding school – by the
post-war years almost a fifth of secondary pupils were living
away from home during term time.

Families shrink

While the nuclear family became dominant, women and
children contributed less to the direct work of the farm.
Because family farms were now economically viable, fathers no
longer had to spend much time away working on others’
properties. The rise of farm machinery – such as tractors in
the interwar years – progressively made family labour less
necessary.

There were fewer children available as New Zealand’s birth
rate declined from about six or seven per family in the 1880s
to just over three in 1913 and then closer to two in the
1930s. In the 1920s and 1930s the number of children was
higher in rural areas than in the city, but there was still a
major reduction.